Beer

Often when I am brewing I save a few jars of wort for use in making yeast starters for future batches. Some folks save it in the freezer, but I prefer canning it since I can then just store it indefinitely on the shelf. Technically speaking, beer wort is not a low enough pH to reliably can it with a boiling water canner, so you have to use a pressure canner.

Here is a series of videos on how to clean and sanitize Cornelius kegs for using in homebrew. You can also find a great deal on the matter to the left in the "Book Navigation" box under "Brewing". I'm finally starting to migrate content over from my brewing site, and my kegging page is the first to come over. I have 1 of the 2 pages done right now and should have the 2nd done by the end of the weekend.

Here is an interesting item that is making the day of a lot of homebrewers out there. Last year when Bruce Oland passed away, he donated to the Dalhousie archives a huge treasure trove of old material from the Keith's brewery. For those not in the know, Keith's got bought by Oland's in the 1920s, and then Oland by Labatt in 1971. As a bit of an aside, the Oland family brewing tradition has another branch which ends at today's Moosehead breweries in New Brunswick.

Homebrewers have always bristled over the "India Pale Ale" moniker on Alexander Keith's flagship beer. Those who know beer, know that this beer is most decidedly NOT an India Pale Ale. An IPA should be a fair bit darker in colour, and significantly more bitter from hops, and higher in alcohol. Here are the full details on the style, from the Beer Judge Certification Program website. That tells you what certified beer judges look for in an IPA. Incidentally, the style of beer gets its name from the fact that it was brewed hoppier and higher in alcohol to survive the trip to India, to supply the British troops there when they were colonizing India. Both alcohol and hops are a preservative. Alexander would have been one of the brewers shipping his beer overseas at the time.

Homebrewers have always said that there is no way in heck Alexander Keith brewed a beer that was anything even remotely similar to the beer which today bears his name.

Here we go again, one of the owners of the Ontario Beer Store is taking a small Ontarian brewery to court. Again. This time Budweiser(tm) is taking Brick Brewing to court over "Lime Beer". Last time around it was Brick again, being taken to court over stubby bottles under the pretense that they are "non-standard". Nevermind that Sleeman bottles are too.

What do you mean "one of the owners?". "The province owns the Beer Store, doesn't it?".

Nope. The beer store was traditionally owned by Molson and Labatt, about 50/50. Somehow Sleeman managed to wedge itself in for about a 10% stake, leaving about 45% for each of the other parties. OK, arguably that makes sense - the Ontario Beer Store owned by Ontarian breweries. What's wrong with that?

Well, the biggest thing that is wrong with it, is that none of those 3 breweries are Canadian-owned anymore. So the Ontario Beer Store monopoly is entirely owned by foreign mega-corporations. Labatt has been bought out by Belian Interbrew, since renamed to InterBev - the same company which bought Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser(tm)). Molson is now owned by Coors in the US, and Sleeman is owned by Sapporo of Japan.